So much for bringing the luck of the Italians to 33rd Street. The Knicks really need a game-changing type player, and in the top-3 they
could have had one. At #6 it's much more of a crapshoot.
I've been pondering the upcoming NBA draft as it pertains to the Knicks and, I hate to say it, but there is no clear right way to approach this draft. Who do they draft? Do they trade down for multiple picks? Or for a solid NBA player and a later pick? Or do they use the pick to get another team to take on one of the contract albatrosses they currently have (Zach Randolph anyone?). Donnie Walsh, Mike D'Antoni, and company (which we can only hope doesn't include Isiah) have their work cut out for them.
The difficult job for team Walsh now is to seriously and diligently evaluate the value of that #6 pick v. the projected value of whomever they may draft. Based on best projections, will Player #6 be worth more to the Knicks as an NBA player than the value of that pick at the time of the draft? Often times the value of the pick itself is much higher than the value of the player once he's in the Association (the list of NBA busts is long and distinguished). I don't yet know the answer to this question for the Knicks, but that is the question that must be asked.
Think about this for a second: in the ten year period from 1997 to 2006 (I chose this time period instead of 98-07 because the 07 class has only had one season in the NBA), there have been a total of 32 first-round picks that have made at least one All-Star team. That's just over 3 All-Stars per year. To think about that another way, that means only slightly more than 10% (3.2 per year divided by 29 1st round selections) of all first-round picks become All-Stars.
If we go back farther, say over the 20 years from 1987-2006, this number climbs to 95 players drafted in the first-round who made at least one All-Star team during their careers. That is less than 5 All-Stars per year. At the very macro level, that's a 1-in-6 chance of drafting an All-Star. And yes, I know this logic is not perfect as not All-Stars are created equal, but I think this does tell us something about the imprecise tools we have to truly project how high school and college players will adapt to the NBA game.
Knowing who is actually going to turn into an All-Star type player, and drafting that guy before you've seen him run the court in a real Association game, is really really hard. Think back to all the guys who were
supposed to be all-stars before they were drafted. In the past 10 years I can quickly come up with a handful -- Kwame Brown, Tyson Chandler, Jay Williams, Emeka Okafor, Shaun Livingston, Marvin Williams, Martell Webster, Andrea Bargnani, Adam Morrison, Ty Thomas.....there's more but you get the point. There are some good players in there, and some guys who maybe have not yet blossomed, but those guys aren't franchise-changers. However before they were drafted a few of them were thought of that way.
If you run some more numbers, over the past 20 years, here is how likely a team is to produce an All-Star by picking in a certain spot in the first round:
| Pick Number | Percentage of All-Stars |
| 1 | 70% |
| 2 | 35% |
| 3 | 50% |
| 4 | 40% |
| 5 | 40% |
| 6 | 25% |
| 7 | 10% |
| 8 | 5% |
| 9 | 20% |
| 10 | 25% |
| 11 | 20% |
| 12 | 5% |
| 13 | 10% |
| 14 | 15% |
| 15 | 5% |
| 16 | 15% |
| 17 | 10% |
| 18 | 20% |
| 19 | 5% |
| 20 | 10% |
| 21 | 5% |
| 22 | 5% |
| 23 | 0% |
| 24 | 15% |
| 25 | 0% |
| 26 | 5% |
| 27 | 0% |
| 28 | 5% |
| 29 | 5% |
At a glance you can see that once a team is picking outside of the top-5, the odds of drafting an All-Star drop significantly. In fact, the #1 pick is the ONLY PICK where the odds of drafting an All-Star are better than 50-50. The odds of picking an All-Star at spots 8 or 9 (5% and 20%) are the same as those of spots 11 and 12, or spots 18 and 19.
Looking at this another way, I've grouped the picks into buckets of 5 (e.g., picks 1-5, picks 6-10, etc) and tallied the likelihood of drafting an All-Star within each bucket. Output below:
Pick Range
| Percentage of All-Stars |
| Picks 1-5 | 47% |
| Picks 6-10 | 17% |
| Picks 11-15 | 11% |
| Picks 16-20 | 12% |
| Picks 21-25 | 5% |
| Picks 26-29 | 3% |
After the top-5, there is a HUGE DROP in the likelihood of finding an All-Star in the draft. And picking between 6-10 is only marginally better than picking between 11-15 or 16-20. Unless there is a truly elite talent on the board, why aren't more teams trading down? Seriously, setting salary aside for a moment, isn't trading a 6-10 pick in order to acquire a proven talent plus a later pick that is only about 5% less likely to produce an All-Star worth it? It certainly seems like it many cases it might be. And this is how we should be evaluating GMs around the draft. Did they get the most value out the combination of their picks and their current roster?
I think NBA executive, pundits, columnist, and fans truly believe that some teams and GMs just have a much better crystal ball than others. But I'm not sure I'm buying that.
Think about how often we hear about guys that were 'passed' on by certain teams. Think about 'passing on Amare Stoudemire' for a minute. Lots of teams passed on him (8, to be exact). The Knicks actually wanted Chris Wilcox (who was an animal in college). Nene was the Knicks' second choice going in to the draft (ahead of Amare). Jerry west called Nene the best athlete in the draft at the time. Phoenix actually preferred Wilcox to Amare, but took Amare because Wilcox was off the board to the Clippers. So for all the credit we give Phoenix for finding that gem at #9, if they had the opportunity to take one or two other guys, they would have. So why are we so quick to praise them for not passing on Stoudemire? They would have if they could have. As much data (quantitative and qualitative) as teams have before the draft, it's kind of a crapshoot to figure out, prior to watching them play in NBA games, which player is really going to blossom. And until this reality is widely understood, we're going to evaluate teams and GMs in the wrong way.
So back to the Knicks.....over the next couple of seasons they need to acquire some good, young, (relatively) cheap talent, and also shed the salary monsters they have. That's really hard to do in a short time. And considering they only have 2 picks this year, only one next year ( a first-rounder ), and then one in 2010 ( a second-rounder since they give away their first round pick as the final nail in the Marbury trade coffin ), this task is even more difficult. Trading down to shed salary and potentially getting a good player plus a pick in the 11-19 range in this draft may make more sense.
Honestly, Donnie Walsh and co. should start working the phones and see what they can get for the pick. They should have deals teed up, as it is very likely that the game-changers are taken by the time #6 rolls around.
